Jayson DeMers , CONTRIBUTOR
I de-mystify SEO and online marketing for business owners.

 

Google has never been a company to rest on its laurels. Over the past two decades, the search engine giant has continued surprising, delighting, and serving its users with new features, layouts, and inner workings. Not all of these features have been successful, but it’s never long before a disliked feature is improved, replaced, or modified.

Recently, much of Google’s focus has been on improving experiences for mobile users—and by that, I’m referring both to users relying on mobile devices like smartphones, and users who need fast, on-the-go information. Event search is the latest new mobile feature, rolled out by Google earlier this month, and it’s worth considering both as a new SEO strategy and as a signal for what’s coming next.

How Event Search Will Work

In the Google search app, event searches take over when Google detects that a user is looking for an event. For example, the basic “events near me” triggers the event search, but specific queries, like “jazz concerts” also bring up relevant results. Rather than seeing a conventional search engine results page (SERP) layout, users then see a list of events relevant to their query, with the option to filter or reorder results based on a specific date, or by qualifiers like “today,” “tomorrow,” and “next week.”

After clicking on an event in the list, Google will display information for how to attend, such as linking a user to a ticket purchasing app or showing an RSVP option.

Supported Sites (and How to Get Involved)

So where is Google getting the information for these events, and how can you be a part of it?

Before launch, Google worked with a number of event sites to coordinate correct markup and listings for each respective enterprise. At launch, event search was displaying results from Meetup, Yext, Vividseats, Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, Jambase, LiveNation, Bookmyshow.com, StubHub, Bandsintown, Eventful, and a handful of others. It plans to add support for even more ticket and event apps in the next several weeks and months.

However, you don’t have to wait for Google to reach out to you to make sure your organization’s events are listed in event search results. In fact, all you have to do to see your event listed is mark it up using standard Schema markup protocols—with a few new rules. Google has a handy guide for developers looking to mark up their site’s events, and it’s simple to follow. You’ll need to properly categorize your event, include all the specific information Google requests, create a unique URL for your event, and be careful not to mislabel an event (especially if it takes place over multiple days).

Marking up your events feeds that information to Google, so it can consider those events for relevant searches made by its users. Depending on how your site is currently set up and what types of events you host, it shouldn’t take long to make the change.

The Increasing Shift to Here and Now

One of the most important takeaways from this change by Google is that it marks another step in the search world to favoring the here and now. Mobile devices sparked a new revolution in moment- and place-focused optimization, and Google keeps pushing for better features. For example, Google overhauled the design and functionality of its local search results to favor users with mobile devices searching for immediate needs while they’re on the go. It has also introduced accelerated mobile pages (AMPs), which are designed to load as quickly as possible for mobile users who need fast information.

The rise in popularity of live video and in-the-moment social media updates also demonstrates users’ interest in seeing more content that’s relevant to their immediate interests. By coordinating content based on proximity to users’ location and proximity to present time, Google is moving forward in new dimensions of “relevance,” and users are demanding more instantly gratifying results.

Is It Worth Optimizing For?

Ignoring the paradigm shift toward immediate gratification for a moment, let’s consider whether it’s “worth it” for businesses to optimize for Google event search. If your business or organization coordinates most of its events through EventBrite, Ticketmaster, or similar sites, your events are likely already optimized for search. You won’t have to change anything to get your events listed. However, if you list your events mostly through your own site, and you host events regularly, it’s imperative that you adopt the latest markup standards so that people can easily find your events when searching for them.

However, even if your organization doesn’t host many events, it’s still in your best interest to mark up your event data whenever it comes up. Employing Schema microformatting is a best practice for all sites, as it makes it possible for your content to be featured in a rich snippet, and properly “understood” by Google’s search crawlers.

Looking to the Future

As you consider how to update your SEO strategy from here, make sure you consider the rise in importance of “here and now” content. Showcasing local events, getting involved in the community, and catering to users’ immediate needs with content and resources is, in my mind, one of the best ways to future-proof your SEO strategy.

It’s likely that Google will continue releasing new features that cater to demanding mobile users over the next several years, so make sure your business stays ahead of the curve.

AUTHOR: KLINT FINLEY.

SOON will be a thing of the past. Starting today, Microsoft will stop supporting Internet Explorer versions 7, 8, 9 and 10 on most operating systems, its biggest step yet toward phasing out one of the most contentious pieces of software ever written.

Microsoft has been distancing itself from the Internet Explorer brand since March, when it launched the Microsoft Edge browser, but it isn’t quite dead. Edge runs only on Windows 10, so Redmond will continue backing a few versions of Internet Explorer on older operating systems it still supports. But it’s still a big departure. Historically, Microsoft has kept several versions of Internet Explorer current each supported version of Windows. Starting today, it will support only the latest version of IE that an operating system can run. It will not create new security patches for the older versions, leaving anyone who doesn’t upgrade vulnerable to new hacks or attacks.

Thankfully, the time has come to move on.
That could be a huge hassle for organizations that use custom-built applications that run correctly only on older browsers. But it could be a boon to web developers and designers still trying to find ways to make websites good on older browsers. Newer web browser still have their quirks, and sites might look different from one browser to the next. But these differences are small compared to how Internet Explorer mangled web pages in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

By insisting on following its own path with IE rather than follow generally accepted standards, Microsoft dictated web design by years. That probably drove many aspiring web developers careers that didn’t require trying to figure out why the margins between images looked different from one browser to another. Keeping too many old browsers in circulation contributed to that mess. Thankfully, the time has come to move on.

The Bad Old Days
Because Internet Explorer didn’t stick to the guidelines established by World Wide Web Consortium the organization that establishes standards for web technologies, it often would display web pages in ways that made them look entirely different from other browsers, such as Netscape, Opera or, later, Firefox. Desperate designers cobbled together ways of making sites work across multiple browsers, but a complex layout sometimes required numerous workarounds. And Internet Explorer 6 was notorious for security vulnerabilities that Microsoft was sometimes slow to patch.

But if it was so bad, why was it so widely used? Most people blame Microsoft’s practice of pre-installing Internet Explorer with Windows starting in 1997, which contributed to a lengthy antitrust suit. Since many users didn’t know other browsers existed and PC vendors had bulk licensing agreements that prevented them from selling computers with alternates pre-installed, Microsoft effectively muscled out the competition.

‘There was a time when Microsoft made the best web browser in the world.’
DOUGLAS CROCKFORD
But that’s not the whole story. Microsoft still bundles Internet Explorer with Windows, yet by most measures it has fallen behind Google Chrome as the world’s most widely used browser. That’s in part because designers and developers have spent years encouraging users to download alternative browsers. But in the late 1990s, countless sites proudly displayed “best viewed on Internet Explorer” banners.

“People don’t remember this, particularly web developers, but there was a time when Microsoft made the best web browser in the world,” JavaScript expert and frequent Internet Explorer critic Douglas Crockford told InfoQ in 2010. “IE 6 was by far the best and continued to be the best browser in the world for many years after, but the other browser makers have all gotten ahead of them.”

That’s an exaggeration. Netscape 6 and Opera 5, both of which were excellent, arrived before Internet Explorer 6. But it’s true that Internet Explorer was ahead of the curve for a few years. Netscape users had to wait three years between the release of Netscape Navigator 4 in 1997 and Netscape Navigator 6 in 2000 (the company ended up skipping Navigator 5 in order to completely rewrite the software). Meanwhile, though Internet Explorer wasn’t very standards compliant, it was quick to add new features in the late 1990s. Developers who wanted to take advantage of cutting edge design and interactivity features had little choice but to use Internet Explorer and encourage their users to do so as well.

But by the time Mozilla, an organization started by former Netscape employees, released the first version of Firefox in 2004, it was Internet Explorer’s turn to seem hopelessly outdated.

Long Hard Road Out of Hell
When Internet Explorer 7 finally arrived in 2006, it was better than its predecessor, but still not standards compliant, so designers kept jumping through hoops to have pages render correctly. Not until Internet Explorer 8 landed in 2009 did Microsoft offer a browser that passed standards test Acid2, a widely used measure of how well browsers complied with the standards of the day, and the company lagged in adopting other standards, such as the 3D graphics technology WebGL. By the time Microsoft caught up to the rest of the browser market, the damage to Internet Explorer’s reputation had already been done.

But the biggest problem for Microsoft was that Internet Explorer 6 refused to die. Large organizations that spent vast sums building custom applications that worked only on older versions of Internet Explorer refused to upgrade. Many consumers didn’t know any better, or ran pirated copies of Windows and couldn’t download updates. As a result, Microsoft continued supporting Internet Explorer 6 until April 8, 2014, more than a decade after its release.

To keep that from happening again, Microsoft won’t update anything older than Internet Explorer 9 on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Server 2012, and Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7, Windows 8, and those versions of Windows Server that can run it. The move likely will expose outdated browsers to more security risks. But in the long run it will drive adoption of newer, better browsers.

With most of the old versions of Internet Explorer dead and buried, Microsoft hopes it can finally move beyond the sorry legacy of its early versions. Edge is a fresh start, with a new name, a new code base and a new boss. Microsoft can’t undo the the damage it did, but it can end the madness.

by Jethro Mullen, Samuel Burke and Selena Larson @CNNMoney

Organizations around the world were digging out Saturday from what experts are calling one of the biggest cyberattacks ever.
Hospitals, major companies and government offices were hit by a virus that seeks to seize control of computers until the victims pay a ransom.
Cybersecurity firm Avast said it had identified more than 75,000 ransomware attacks in 99 countries on Friday, making it one of the broadest and most damaging cyberattacks in history.
Avast said the majority of the attacks targeted Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan. But U.K. hospitals, Chinese universities and global firms like Fedex (FDX) also reported they had come under assault.
Security experts said the spread of the ransomware had been stopped late Friday. But it remained unclear how many organizations had already lost control of their data to the malicious software — and researchers warned that copycat attacks could follow.
Europol said Saturday that the attack was of an “unprecedented level and requires international investigation.” And the U.K. government called an emergency meeting over the crisis.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, at a meeting of world leaders in Italy, said the attack was a reminder of the importance of cybersecurity. “It’s a big priority of mine that we protect the financial infrastructure,” he said.
The ransomware, called WannaCry, locks down all the files on an infected computer and asks the computer’s administrator to pay in order to regain control of them. The exploit was leaked last month as part of a trove of NSA spy tools.
The ransomware is spread by taking advantage of a Windows vulnerability that Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) released a security patch for in March. But computers and networks that hadn’t updated their systems were still at risk.
In the wake of the attack, Microsoft said it had taken the “highly unusual step” of releasing a patch for computers running older operating systems including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003.
But the patches won’t do any good for machines that have already been hit.
“Affected machines have six hours to pay up and every few hours the ransom goes up,” said Kurt Baumgartner, the principal security researcher at security firm Kaspersky Lab. “Most folks that have paid up appear to have paid the initial $300 in the first few hours.”
Related: 5 things to know about the attack
Experts told CNNTech that an unidentified cyber security researcher accidentally stopped the spread of WannaCry by registering a domain name contained in the ransomware’s code.
The researcher, who uses the Twitter handle @malwaretechblog, told CNNTech they registered the domain name in order to study the virus, but it turned out the ransomware needed it to remain unregistered to keep spreading.
However, a hacker could change the code to remove the domain name and try the ransomware attack again.
And WannaCry has already caused massive disruption around the globe.
Sixteen National Health Service organizations in the UK were hit, and some of those hospitals canceled outpatient appointments and told people to avoid emergency departments if possible. The NHS said in a statement on Saturday that there was no evidence that patient information had been compromised.
In China, the internet security company Qihoo360 issued a “red alert” saying that a large number of colleges and students in the country had been affected by the ransomware, which is also referred to as WannaCrypt. State media reported that digital payment systems at PetroChina gas stations were offline, forcing customers to pay cash.
Related: NSA’s powerful Windows hacking tools leaked online
“Global internet security has reached a moment of emergency,” Qihoo360 warned.
Major global companies said they also came under attack.
Fedex said Friday it was “experiencing interference with some of our Windows-based systems caused by malware” and was trying to fix the problems as quickly as possible. Two big telecom companies, Telefónica (TEF) of Spain and Megafon of Russia, were also hit.
“This is turning into the biggest cybersecurity incident I’ve ever seen,” U.K.-based security architect Kevin Beaumont said.
How a ransomware attack can affect emergency services

Russia’s Interior Ministry released a statement Friday acknowledging a ransomware attack on its computers, adding that less than 1% of computers were affected, and that the virus was now “localized” and being destroyed.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a statement late Friday, encouraged people to update their operating systems. “We are actively sharing information related to this event and stand ready to lend technical support and assistance as needed to our partners, both in the United States and internationally,” the department said.
Related: How leaked NSA spy tools created a hacking free-for-all
According to Matthew Hickey, founder of the security firm Hacker House, the attack is not surprising, and it shows many organizations do not apply updates in a timely fashion.
When CNNTech first reported the Microsoft vulnerabilities leaked in April, Hickey said they were the “most damaging” he’d seen in several years, and warned that businesses would be most at risk.
Consumers who have up-to-date software are protected from this ransomware. Here’s how to turn automatic updates on.
It’s not the first time hackers have used the leaked NSA tools to infect computers. Soon after the leak, hackers infected thousands of vulnerable machines with a backdoor called DOUBLEPULSAR.
— Donna Borak, Samuel Burke, Mariano Castillo, Jessica King, Yuli Yang, Steven Jiang, Clare Sebastian and Livvy Doherty contributed to this report.
CNNMoney (Hong Kong)
First published May 13, 2017: 9:57 AM ET

Chromium Blog

News and developments from the open source browser project

Thursday, April 27, 2017

In January, we began our quest to improve how Chrome communicates the connection security of HTTP pages. Chrome now marks HTTP pages as “Not secure” if they have password or credit card fields. Beginning in October 2017, Chrome will show the “Not secure” warning in two additional situations: when users enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode. Fix your website now…

Our plan to label HTTP sites as non-secure is taking place in gradual steps, based on increasingly broad criteria. Since the change in Chrome 56, there has been a 23% reduction in the fraction of navigations to HTTP pages with password or credit card forms on desktop, and we’re ready to take the next steps.

Passwords and credit cards are not the only types of data that should be private. Any type of data that users type into websites should not be accessible to others on the network, so starting in version 62 Chrome will show the “Not secure” warning when users type data into HTTP sites.

 

When users browse Chrome with Incognito mode, they likely have increased expectations of privacy. However, HTTP browsing is not private to others on the network, so in version 62 Chrome will also warn users when visiting an HTTP page in Incognito mode.

Eventually, we plan to show the “Not secure” warning for all HTTP pages, even outside Incognito mode. We will publish updates as we approach future releases, but don’t wait to get started moving to HTTPS! HTTPS is easier and cheaper than ever before, and it enables both the best performance the web offers and powerful new features that are too sensitive for HTTP. Check out our set-up guides to get started.

Posted by Emily Schechter, Chrome Security Team

Spearhead Multimedia gas very inexpensive solutions to make your site secure.  Find out here…

Despite the fact that Google’s Chrome browser is the market leader in Internet browsers, Google is always working to bring additional features to millions of users in order to stay competitive. Scroll anchoring is one such feature that, after nearly 10 months in testing, was finally released to end users. But even if it takes Google months to officially release its experimental features, users can go to chrome://flags to try them out right now. Just recently we showed you how to enable the new Custom Context Menu feature in Chrome Dev or Chrome Canary, for instance. This time, we wanted to talk about a potentially exciting feature that Google is working on called copyless paste.

Copyless Paste

This new feature can be found in Chrome versions 59+, meaning users on the Chrome Dev or Chrome Canary channels can access it. All you have to do is paste the following text into your address bar: chrome://flags#enable-copyless-paste.

Just based on the description of this flag, it seems like a really smart change to potentially integrate Google Chrome with the rest of the apps on our device. The feature promises to provide suggestions for text input based on recent web browsing context, and as an example it states that if you are looking at a restaurant’s website and switch to the Google Maps app then the keyboard would display that restaurant’s name as a search suggestion.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that this flag actually works yet. I’ve tried going to numerous restaurants’ webpages and then opening the Maps app, but I never saw the text input suggestions in Gboard that the feature promised. I’ve also asked a friend running Android O to try to get this feature to work, but to no avail.

We’ve heard rumors of this feature being worked on before Android O was officially unveiled, and based on the description of the “Copy Less” feature that was exclusively provided to VentureBeat at the time, we have strong reason to suspect that this Chrome flag and the rumored feature are one and the same.

I am not exactly sure how this feature actually works under the hood (any experts in Chromium are free to chime in), but I do know that it is currently in active development and testing so it may take some time for this feature to actually start working.

We’ll be following the development of this feature to see how it pans out, and will update you if/when it starts working.

By Mishaal Rahman

With just two days to go until the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are released, the verdict is in: Samsung’s new flagship smartphones are fantastic. I published my full in-depth Galaxy S8 review on Tuesday morning, and my feelings on the new flagship were quite clear. Samsung has actually managed to out-design Apple with new smartphones that not only look better than the iPhone 7 and the 7 Plus, they feel better as well thanks to Samsung’s smart curved design, which helps the phones sit more comfortably in the hand.

Of course, the new Galaxy S8 is much more than just a pretty face. It also offers a new 10nm processor and software optimizations that come closer than ever before to matching the iPhone’s performance (closer, yes, but the gap is still quite wide), as well as a ton of nifty features users will appreciate.

While the design is clearly the best thing about Samsung’s new phones, there’s plenty more to look forward to — and the best thing about the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ aside from the design is actually something people were complaining about ahead of the phones’ unveiling.

If you haven’t already read our full Galaxy S8 review, you should definitely check it out ahead of this Friday’s launch. We also followed up the review with two supplemental posts that pitted the Galaxy S8 and S8+ against their top rivals, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. In those posts, we covered 5 ways the Galaxy S8 is better than the iPhone 7 and 5 ways the iPhone 7 is better than the Galaxy S8.

There’s one terrific Galaxy S8 feature that wasn’t covered in either of those two supplemental posts, though, and it might come as a surprise to some smartphones fans.

Ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 announcement last month, all of the phones specs leaked before being confirmed by Samsung. We learned that Samsung’s new flagships would be powered by next-generation 10nm processors, we learned they would have huge new Super AMOLED displays with QHD+ resolution, and we learned about everything else Samsung had in store for the new phones. Among those details was the revelation that the Galaxy S8 and S8+ would feature the exact same 12-megapixel Dual Pixel camera as the Galaxy Note 7 and the year-old Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. A number of Android fans were upset by the news.

When it comes to flagship smartphones, we’ve been trained to expect improvements each year in every key area. We want better displays, more powerful processors, bigger batteries, and of course better cameras. But in 2017, Samsung decided to use the exact same camera hardware that it has been using for the past year.

If Samsung’s flagship phones had a camera that was not on par with comparable smartphones from rival vendors, this would probably be a huge problem. But as anyone who has ever owned a Galaxy S7, S7 edge or Note 7 knows, that’s not the case at all.

Samsung’s Dual Pixel camera was one of the best in the world when it first appeared on the S7, and it’s still one of the best cameras in the world today. In fact, I would argue that its only real competition comes from the Google Pixel and the iPhone 7, both of which were release long after the Galaxy S7. Among these three phones, I think it’s impossible to name a clear winner. Also of note, Samsung says it has made several updates on the software side to help with things like low-light performance (which, by the way, was already quite impressive on the S7 and Note 7).

I’ve been carrying the Galaxy S8+ with me ever since I received my review unit last week, and I’ve been using it almost exclusively to take photos. I am thoroughly impressed. I’ve snapped all sorts of images, from outdoor shots in great lighting, to indoor close-ups, to portraits, and everything in between. Of course, I’ve also taken plenty of pictures of my dog.

Alongside battery life, the camera is obviously one of the most important features of a smartphone. Most people don’t even own a dedicated camera anymore because there’s really no reason to… especially if you have a Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+. The Infinity Display design is definitely the best thing about Samsung’s new flagship smartphones, but the camera truly is a close second.

Wouldn’t it be great for all of that spam to be filtered BEFORE it hits your phone, computer and other devices?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could also filter email you want to read later, but not have it clutter your inbox?

My email account is over 22 years old and is probably on hundreds of thousands of email lists out there.

After a few years of use, I recommend Spamdrain.  It captures 99% of the spam I would otherwise have to deal with on all of my devices.  I’ve tried numerous spam filters over the years and this, is by far, the best, hands off, automated system I’ve found.

It also holds as “Marketing/Newsletter”, email I may want to read later like ads from companies I like and information I may want to see at another time.

You get all of this for $16.99 annually.

What are you waiting for?  Get Spamdrain now!